Following a major shakeup of the senior hierarchy at Fairfax earlier this year, attention has now shifted to the rest of the conglomerate, with more job cuts looking inevitable. Plus: how the changes affect Fairfax Magazines.
That new ink smell of glossy pages will now be thing of the past for Unlimited magazine because, following in the footsteps of magazines like Newsweek, it’s going fully digital in April.
It’s a rather interesting period in the history of magazines and, despite the prevailing belief that shiny new digital toys are killing off paper, the latest readership and circulation numbers have once again showed the market is still in fairly good health in New Zealand.
The MPA has chosen its new board, with Tangible Media’s John Baker replacing Fairfax’s Lynley Belton as chair and ACP’s Paul Dykzeul replacing acting deputy chair Cathy Parker from Adrenalin. And the new heads have some big plans to breathe life into the sector—and, more specifically, promote the unique benefits of the medium to advertisers and eventually increase its share of the revenue pie.
The times they are a-changin’ in print media land. Display ads are harder to come by and publishers are being forced to come up with creative solutions to help brands spread their gospel. And, to reference the increasing amount of revenue such creative executions contribute to the magazine industry’s coffers, the MPA has agreed to a new protocol that it hopes will capture more of the spend occurring in magazines for Nielsen’s Advertising Information Services.
Fairfax Magazines has purchased Driver magazine and will merge it with New Zealand Autocar from the May issue, after it became clear to John Baker, of former Driver publisher Tangible Media, that the publishing landscape had changed and two magazines devoted to new cars couldn’t be supported, particularly given the large decrease in sales of new cars in recent times.